Thursday, June 18, 2009

Based heavily on that feedback, our current “Top 5” areas that we are giving significant attention to are:

1. Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities. 2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance. 3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience. 4. Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance. 5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.

My comments:

1. It's sad that Mythic didn't learn anything from Dark Ages of Camelot, which had the same exact problems. Repeating mistakes is bad.

2. Performance was great in beta, but took a nosedive after launch. During my playtime, Mythic never recovered. This was probably the number one reason casual players left the game.

3. Tier 4 sucks. Horrible game design. Laughable at best.

4. Everyone knew it was going to be an issue at launch, so not sure why they are thinking they can address it now. The basic game design makes balance impossible. Without fundamental game changes, this is a lost cause.

5. I thought the rewards were pretty well distributed until players hit the roadblock that was level 40. At 40, rewards are sparse unless players grind and even then its fairly minor in terms of upgrades. Most of the low end 40 gear should have been made accessible in the mid 30s.

Based heavily on that feedback, our current “Top 5” areas that we are giving significant attention to are:

1. Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities. 2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance. 3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience. 4. Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance. 5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.

My comments:

1. It's sad that Mythic didn't learn anything from Dark Ages of Camelot, which had the same exact problems. Repeating mistakes is bad.

2. Performance was great in beta, but took a nosedive after launch. During my playtime, Mythic never recovered. This was probably the number one reason casual players left the game.

3. Tier 4 sucks. Horrible game design. Laughable at best.

4. Everyone knew it was going to be an issue at launch, so not sure why they are thinking they can address it now. The basic game design makes balance impossible. Without fundamental game changes, this is a lost cause.

5. I thought the rewards were pretty well distributed until players hit the roadblock that was level 40. At 40, rewards are sparse unless players grind and even then its fairly minor in terms of upgrades. Most of the low end 40 gear should have been made accessible in the mid 30s.